


Anosmia

by Rakefetzyz



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Blindness, Established Relationship, Illnesses, Scents & Smells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:49:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29632125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rakefetzyz/pseuds/Rakefetzyz
Summary: Anosmia is the loss of ability to smell. In this story Matt loses his senses of smell and taste due to COVID-19.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Karen Page
Kudos: 18





	Anosmia

Matt jolted awake. He reached toward Karen still sleeping beside him. 

A pleasing warmth emanated from her body, mixing in his consciousness with her steady breath and heartbeat.

Something was wrong though. He touched her to make sure she was okay.

Still groggy, he took morning inventory: fatigue, aching muscles, pressure on his lungs. But Matt was used to tiredness, he was used to pain in his joints and muscles and had felt the pressure of a collapsed lung more than once. He drifted back to sleep.

When he woke again, he decided he would just keep going. He would get dressed and go to the office.

He stumbled into the kitchen and stopped. Karen’s spoon was clinking against her mug. There was a slight rise in temperature around the coffee machine and above Karen’s mug. But no accompanying aroma. She was chewing what must be a chocolate croissant. No pastry particles reached his taste buds.

Karen’s heartbeat was there, but Matt could no longer smell the floral scent of her shampoo or taste her lip gloss from across the room.

Karen insisted that he get tested for COVID-19. She thought she had better get tested too. She sat Matt down at the table, made him a cup of tea with honey, and told him what they had to do.

Even before Matt got the results back, he knew what he had. 

It was bound to happen. Sure he and Foggy and Karen were wearing masks, keeping a safe distance at the office.

Yet cases were surging. Matt was adamant on going out most nights. Thugs and gang members were not the sort of people to go into isolation if they became exposed. Of course his test came back positive. 

Karen tested negative but would need to self quarantine.

“I guess you will have to isolate now too,” he said. “Go back to your apartment until I’m better and you’re sure you didn’t catch it.”

Karen refused to go. “I’ll isolate here with you.”

“I can’t let you...” Matt argued then gave up. He went back to bed and stayed there.

Karen moved to sleep on the couch. The two always stayed more than six feet from each other. Karen agreed to disinfect the bathroom often as they only had one. 

The next day Matt felt worse. Karen brought chicken soup, ginger ale, toast and jello to leave outside the bedroom door, foods her mother always used to bring her when she was sick.

Matt tried to eat. But he was used to savoring the most subtle flavors. He could barely nibble food that had no taste.

As he began to feel better, the loss of two more senses struck him hard.

He already missed so much in a vision oriented world. Enhanced sense gave him spatial awareness, true. But visual information on screens, signs and notices, views and distant cityscapes were all lost to him.

Foggy had always filled him in and now Karen also joined in verbal descriptions. With a best friend and a girlfriend to describe views and read signs, he didn’t feel as though he was missing too much.

But smell and taste were missing now too.

“Most people do get their sense of smell and taste back,” Karen reassured him.

Most people did. Not all. Some were still unable to smell or taste months later. What if that happened to him?

He could return to the law office and to court. He could listen to clients, hear court proceedings, and could read his braille display and printouts.

But could he still be Daredevil?

The problem was, he needed to be both.

Once he tried to stop being Daredevil. He tried when Daredevil got Elektra killed, when Daredevil drove away the only two real friends Matt had ever known. That lasted until evil threats against his city forced Daredevil to reemerge and fight.

He tried once to stop being Matt Murdock. The collapse of Midland Circle left Matt damaged and questioning everything he ever believed about himself. That lasted until his friends helped him understand the void that Matt Murdock’s absence left. A void not only in them but in the very soul of Hell's kitchen. 

He could give up neither and remain whole. 

Karen understood this. Foggy, ever the loyal friend, accepted it, supported Matt and gradually came to understand. Karen understood and loved him better for it. Matt felt luckier than he deserved to be. 

Could he protect the Kitchen with only two remaining senses?

Taste mattered less. Heightened taste enriched his knowledge of the world. He missed it, yet it wasn’t essential.

Scent mattered. When he tracked a mugger, he could follow a trial of blood by the coppery smell. He relied on smells of sweat and nervousness to aim kicks and punches. Tarry, dusty odors allowed him to better judge the distance between rooftops.

With no sense of smell, Daredevil would fail often, might even get killed.

But he needed to be Daredevil. He could still hear every anguished scream from every suffering victim for blocks around. How could he ignore the screams?

“Come back to work first,” Foggy told him on the phone “There’s plenty of good you can do here and cases are starting to pile up.”

So Matt climbed the back stairs to the makeshift office over the butcher shop. Again everything felt wrong. He had become accustomed to the meat and sausage smells from below, had even made a game of informing his partners exactly what each customer bought.

Now the office was odor free. Less distracting maybe, but it bothered him. Trying to concentrate on work, he found the absence of smell distracted him too. 

“This is your kind of case buddy.” Foggy explained the pro bono case of the Sweeney kid, a sixteen-year-old who fell into bad company and got drawn into the drug scene. He thought Matt could get the kid community service instead of time in juvie. 

Matt agreed that the kid deserved another chance, but his mind kept straying. He forced himself to concentrate.

Foggy and Karen had to remind him to eat. They brought takeout from his favorite Thai and Indian restaurants. 

“You need to build your strength up,” they said depositing food on his desk. They were right but he could only manage a little of the tasteless meals.

A week after his return to work, the screams pierced his brain in a way he could no longer ignore. He started going out at night again. Karen and Foggy insisted he call the police whenever he could. That started an almost nightly phone correspondence with Brett Mahoney. Brett had an idea what was going on. 

“Don’t tell me how you came by this information,” Brett always said before hanging up. “I don’t want to know.”

Calling Brett worked most of the time, except for cases of corruption. Except when human traffickers bought off the officers on night duty.

Matt did his best, but the villains eluded him more often. He crept home in defeat some nights, overcome with despair, remembering how he wanted to die when he lost his heightened senses after Midland Circle.

Karen was there to take him in her arms and hold him, silently telling him the same words she spoke once before she knew about him. “You’re not alone, Matt. You never were.”

Karen was there to keep him from sinking quite so far into despair.

One morning he noticed an acrid smell as he entered the loft kitchen.

“What’s that,” he said wrinkling his nose. 

“Just the coffee,” Karen answered. But it smelled like more like rotten leaves and vinegar than coffee.

“The research I did shows that when COVID patients regain ability to smell, everything smells wrong at first. Most people return to normal after a few weeks.” Karen told him.

So Matt waited. 

He worked on the cases Foggy chose for him and waited. 

Most COVID patients’ sense of smell returned to normal. 

There was nothing to do but wait.


End file.
